Early Christian life as reflected in its literature

the long version

This volume makes an approach to the historical study of early Christianity which is new in that it relegates doctrine and teaching as quite secondary, while it utilizes literature as source for the study of early Christian life, rather than as an end in itself. It does, indeed, make use of the framework and sequence of early Christian literature. In the author's view the most important contribution of the present study is to be found in the picture of the types of the religious life which are reconstructed from the study of the gospels and the several pictures, so fascinating in their contrasts, developed from the materials of the later books of the New Testament and from contemporaneous sources. - Preface.